A Mad Marriage, May Agnes Fleming [best big ereader .TXT] 📗

nervous excitement from head to foot; she

is but a frail, sensitive little creature at best. Her mother is weeping

audibly—her father coughs, takes off his glasses and wipes them

incessantly. France Forrester stands with dark, tender eyes, and in her

heart a vague feeling of pity, which she cannot define, for this fragile

looking child-wife.

 

“Oh, Eric!” she says, laying her hand on his shoulder and looking up at

him with those dim, dusk eyes, “be good to her! take care of her, love

her always. You hold that child’s very life in your hands; if you ever

neglect her, if you ever grow cold to her, as surely as we both stand

here, she will break her heart.”

 

He laughs—nothing irritates him this thrice happy day, and this is

really a most stupendous joke.

 

“I neglect her! I cold to her! When I am either, I pray Heaven I may

die!”

 

She shrank back, something in his words, something in his look,

frightened her.

 

“He will neglect her, he will turn cold,” some inward, prophetic voice

whispered; “and the doom he has invoked may fall.”

 

One other heard those impassioned words—Dennison. He paused a moment,

caught Eric’s hand, and wrung it hard.

 

“Look to yourself, Dynely,” he said, in a hoarse, hurried voice, “if you

ever forget that vow!”

 

Then he ran rapidly up the stairs and disappeared.

 

Lord Dynely looked after him, shrugged his shoulders slightly, and

laughed again.

 

“Poor old Terry!” he said, “‘the ruling passion strong in death.’ As

much in love with Lady Dynely as he ever was with Crystal Higgins. Ah,

well! time blunts these things. Let us hope he will have lived down his

ill-starred madness before we meet again.”

 

The bride’s door opens—a flock of pink and white, and sky blue nymphs

flutter out. The bride for an instant remains alone. Indifferent to what

may be thought, may be said, Dennison enters, goes up to the new-made

peeress, takes both her hands in his, with a clasp whose cruelty is

unconscious, and looks down with gloomy eyes into the startled,

milk-white loveliness of her face.

 

“Crystal,” he says, his voice hoarse and hurried still, “I must say one

word to you before we part. If, in the time that is coming, you are ever

in trouble, if you are ever in need of a friend, will you send for me?

All our lives we have been as brother and sister—by the memory of that

bond between us let me be the one to come to you if you ever need a

friend.”

 

She looked up at him. To the day of his death that look haunted him—so

radiantly, so unutterably happy.

 

“I in trouble! I in need of a friend!” she repeated in a slow,

rapturous sort of whisper. “I, Eric’s wife! Ah, Terry! dear old

fellow, dear old brother, that can never be. I am the happiest, happiest

creature on all God’s earth!”

 

“Yet, promise,” he reiterates, in the same gloomy tone. “Who can foresee

the future? If trouble ever comes—mind, I don’t say that it ever

will—I pray it never may—but if it comes and you need help, you will

send for me? Promise me this.”

 

“It is treason to Eric to admit any such supposition,” she laughs; “I

don’t admit it, but if it will please you, Terry,” the radiant

brilliance of her eyes softens to pity as she looks at him, “I promise.

It is a promise you will never be called upon to redeem—remember that.

No trouble can ever touch me. Eric loves me and has made me his wife.

Let go, Terry—he is calling.”

 

He releases her hands, she holds out one again, with that tender,

compassionate glance.

 

“Good-by, Terry,” she says, softly. “If I have ever given you pain I am

sorry. Forgive me before I go.”

 

“There is nothing to forgive,” he answers, huskily. “No man on earth

could help loving you, and all women seem to love him. Good-by, little

Crystal, and God in heaven bless you!”

 

It is their parting. She flies down the stairs to where her impatient

possessor stands.

 

“I—I was saying good-by to Terry,” she falters, trembling already, even

at that shadow of a frown on his god-like brow. But at sight of her the

shadow changes to brightest sunshine.

 

“Good-by! good-by! good-by!” echoes and echoes on every hand.

 

The bride is kissed, and passed round to be kissed again, and there is

crying and confusion generally, and in the midst of it Miss Forrester’s

wicked black eyes are laughing at Eric, who stands inwardly fuming at

all this “confounded scene,” mortally jealous, and longing to tear his

bride from them all and make an end of the howling.

 

It does end at last; he hands her into the carriage, springs after,

slams the door, the driver cracks his whip, and they whirl off from the

door. A shower of slippers are hurled after them—then the carriage

turns an angle and disappears, and all is over.

 

*

 

The guests begin to disperse, some at once, some not until next day. A

gloomy silence falls over the lately noisy, merry house—it is almost as

though there had been a death. Reaction after so much excitement sets

in, everybody, more or less, looks miserable. Terry Dennison is the

first to go—he rejoins his regiment. Lady Dynely, dowager, and Miss

Forrester are the next, they return for the winter to Rome; and Miss

Forrester makes no secret of her eagerness to be off.

 

The next day dawns, sleety, rainy, chill, a very winter day. The last

guest has left the vicarage by the noon train, and the depression and

dismalness is more dismal than ever. The eight remaining Misses Higgins

wander, cheerless and miserable of aspect, through the lately-filled

rooms, setting to rights and taking up the dull thread of their dull

gray lives once more.

 

When night falls, shrouded in sleety rain, the dark old vicarage stands

sombre and forlorn, despite the presence of those eight bright

creatures, under the inky, dripping, Lincolnshire sky.

 

PART THIRD.

 

CHAPTER I.

 

HOW THE NEW YEAR BEGAN.

 

A raw and rainy February evening—the first week of the month. Over

London a murky, smoke-colored sky hung, dripping wet, miserable tears

over the muddy, smoke-colored city. The famous “pea-soup atmosphere” was

at its very pea-soupiest—figures flitted to and fro through the murk,

like damp spectres, shrouded in great-coats and umbrellas. The street

lamps, that had been lit all day, winked and flickered, yellow and

dismal specks in the fog.

 

The streets of the city were filled with noisy, jostling life—the

streets of the West End were silent and deserted. The deadest of all

dead seasons had come; the great black houses were hermetically sealed;

the denizens of Belgravia and Mayfair had flitted far away; even the

brilliant, gaslit emporiums of Regent Street were empty and deserted

this foggy February evening.

 

At the bay-window of one of the great club houses of St. James Street, a

man stood smoking a cigar and staring moodily out at the dark and dismal

twilight. The wet flag-stones glimmered in the pallid flicker of the

street lamps, few and far between; drenched and draggled pedestrians

went by. Now and then a hansom tore past, waking the gruesome echoes.

These things were all the man at the bay-window had to stare at; but for

the last hour he had stood there motionless, his moody eyes fixed upon

the rain-beaten glass. The solitary watcher, stranded upon Western

London at this most inhospitable season, was Terry Dennison. Terry

Dennison who yesterday had obtained a fortnight’s leave, and who, this

dreary February evening, found himself in the old familiar quarters—why

or wherefore, he hardly knew. There were numbers of country

houses—bright, hospitable houses, to which he held standing

welcome—houses where a “southerly wind and a cloudy sky proclaimed it a

hunting morning,” but he had thrown over all, and was here as utterly

alone, it seemed to him, as though he had been wrecked on a deserted

island.

 

The five weeks that had passed since Christabel Higgins’ wedding day had

made but slight outward alteration in Terry. He was looking haggard, and

jaded,—the honest blue eyes kept the old kindly, genial glance for all

things, but they look out with wistful weariness to-night. Where are

they this wretched, February evening, he wonders—where is she, what

is she doing?

 

Are she and Eric doing the honeymoon still in the leafless groves of

Brittany, or have they gone to Rome to join the Gordon Caryll party,

where Lady Dynely and Miss Forrester also are? An unutterable longing to

see Crystal once more fills him—it is folly, he knows, something worse

than folly, perhaps, but before these two weeks of freedom expire he

must stand face to face with Viscount Dynely’s bride.

 

The last gleam of the dark daylight is fading entirely out as a hansom

whirls up to the door and deposits its one passenger. The glare of the

lamp falls full upon him, and Dennison recognizes an old acquaintance.

As the man enters he turns and holds out his hand.

 

“What! you, Dennison? My dear fellow, happy to meet you. I saw a face

at the window and thought it was Macaulay’s New Zealander come before

his time, to philosophize over the desolation of London. Beastly

weather, as usual. How three millions of people, more or less, can drag

out existence through it—”

 

The speaker flings himself into a chair and gives up the problem in

weary disgust.

 

“I thought you were in Greece, Burrard,” says Terry, throwing away his

cigar, and depositing himself in a second easy-chair.

 

“Was, all January. Gave it up and came to Paris, to have what our

transatlantic neighbors call ‘a good time;’ and just as I was having it

(Felicia’s there, you know), came a telegram from Somersetshire,

summoning me home. Governor—gout in the stomach—thinks he’s going to

die, and wishes to have all his offspring around him. It’s the fifth

time I have been summoned in the same way,” says Mr. Burrard, in a

disgusted tone, “and nothing ever comes of it. It’s all hypo on the

governor’s part, and the family know it; but as he’ll cut us off with a

shilling if we disobey, there’s nothing for it. It was beastly crossing

the Channel, and I’m always seasick. It’s an awful nuisance, Terry—give

you my word,” Mr. Burrard gloomily concludes.

 

“Hard lines, old fellow,” laughs Terry. “Let us hope this time that your

journey will not be in vain. So Paris is looking lively, is it? No

February fog there, I suppose? I shouldn’t mind running over myself for

a few days. Many people one knows?”

 

“Lots,” Mr. Burrard sententiously replies; “and, as I said before, la

belle Felicia at the Varietes, younger, and lovelier, and more fatal

than ever. Gad! Terry, the divine art of petits soupers will never die

out while that woman exists. She’s a sorceress and enchantress, a witch.

She must be five-and-thirty at the very least: and last night, as I sat

beside her, I could have taken my oath she wasn’t a day more than

seventeen.”

 

“Hard hit as ever, dear boy,” Terry says, lighting another regalia. “I

thought that was an old story—over and done with ages ago—that you

were clothed and in your right mind once more, and about to take unto

yourself a wife of the daughters of the land. Have one?”

 

He presents his cigar case and box of Vesuvians, and Burrard gloomily

selects and lights up.

 

“You know Felicia, Terry?” he asks, after